his was the dance crow had danced in youth in praise to god, for dance was his love and love the body’s hallelu— without chagrin or prevarication, this was joy joy until god fled and steps and flight movement he had not moved since his soul became still as god’s…
Tag: Poetry
CIIIR
by Peter Cowlam CIIIR A reining in at the eco-centre. Dials in reverse for the lost trials of inspection. Ends but a stunted survey, fixated on crowds and venues. They are here, young obsessives of ‘belonging’, cropped in line, and blessed by the shades of the dead, each with plans…
Curing the Pig, by Eliza Granville
Episode 10 The Quixotesque misadventures of unreconstructed Marcher Morgan Jones-Jones, who has probably not heard of the suffragettes let alone second- and third-wave feminists. “Give it a rest, can’t you?” snarled Morgan, his eyes scanning the green for a large stone to dash the creature’s brains in. He didn’t feel…
Tagore Prize 2021-22 Awarded to Sudeep Sen
Review by Peter Cowlam All of us here at Ars Notoria are delighted at the news that our poetry editor, Sudeep Sen, has been awarded the prestigious Tagore Prize for 2021–22. The Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize, a literary honour in India conferred annually for published works by Indian authors, recognises…
The Tragedy of Mister Morn, a Play by Vladimir Nabokov
Review by Peter Cowlam Nabokov, an aristocrat dispossessed by the October Revolution, in what is typical for him applies aesthetics rather than political discourse as filter over the coup Mister Morn has successfully repelled. The distortions of social unease are just a spectre to be poeticised over. It is Morn,…
The Alphabets of Latin America: A Carnival of Poems, by Abhay K
Reviewed by Inderjeet Mani Latin America can lay claim to some of the world’s most magnificent geographies and vital ecosystems, teeming with unique life-forms and vibrant subcultures. The area has also borne witness to vast empires and savage colonial histories, and fired the imaginations of many gifted writers and artists….
Nothing Stays Put, by Harry Greenberg
Nothing Stays Put The strange and wonderful are too much with us. The protea of the antipodes – a great, globed, blazing honeybee of a bloom – for sale in the supermarket! We are in our decadence, we are not entitled. What have we done to deserve all the produce…
Six Poems by Peter Adair
London, 1983 O I had a future. Patrick Kavanagh Once there was a bedsit the size of a coffin. Once there was a man pounding out on his typewriter short stories that never made the classic Irish canon. The inmates twist and turn on their celibate beds. Each avoids the…
Three poems by Dominic Fisher
We are pleased to publish three poems from Dominic Fisher’s latest collection of poems, A Customised Selection of Fireworks, available from Shoestring Press later this month (May 2022). A Customised Selection of Fireworks It’s the sequence that really matters colour rhythm flow which isn’t something the lay person gets right…
The Best Asian Poetry 2021–22 (editor Sudeep Sen)
review by Peter Cowlam Kitaab International is a Singapore-based publishing house, whose open call through various media outlets across the world, when the anthology was planned, resulted in 1,500 pages of poetry sent in by almost 500 poets. As commissioning editor, Sudeep Sen invited further writers from across ‘AustralAsia’ to…
RABINDRANATH TAGORE AS THE INTIMATE ‘OTHER’
SUDEEP SEN 1. RABINDRANATH TAGOREhaiku triptych ERASURE lines of poems scratched out, erased to ink in — new shapes — art revealed SELF-PORTRAIT gouache shade’s matt-blur — an outline of the psyche — subtle peek into soul’s eye SONG rabindra sangeet’s nasal baritone — honey- tinged, monotonic — Sudeep Sen…
ALFREDO PÉREZ ALENCART
WPP [World Poetry/Prose Portfolio] New Series | No. 1 ALFREDO PÉREZ ALENCART, born in Puerto Maldonado, Perú in 1962 is a Peruvian-Spanish poet and teacher at the University of Salamanca. He has published 15 books, among them, Mother Forest (2002), Hear me, my Brethren (2009), Cartography of the Revelations (2011),…
David Rushmer’s theatre of poetry
Yogesh Patel When I discovered David Rushmer’s uncluttered poetry with distilled expressions in the mould of neo-impressionism in Remains to Be Seen published by Shearsman Books, I was thrilled but wondered if such European style of abstract poetry would be appreciated at all in England. Chhāyāvād in Hindi is akin to…
Tahrir and the Poetry of Witness
The Utopians of Tahrir Square: Dr. Anba Jawi and Catherine Temma Davidson Introduction by Catherine Davidson The Utopians of Tahrir Square contains poems from 28 young Iraqi poets whose work responds to the protests for human rights that took over Baghdad’s Tahrir (Freedom) Square in 2019. Bringing these poems to life…
Anthropocene: Climate Change, Contagion, Consolation, by Sudeep Sen
Poems Reviewed by Peter Cowlam The term ‘Anthropocene’ has been proposed as the definition of the geological epoch dating from the start of significant human impact on the earth, and on its ecosystems. Anthropocene is also the title of Sudeep Sen’s latest (multi-genre) book of poetry, prose and photography –…
Poet of Honour: Hugo Williams
Hugo Williams is hardly wordy in expressing himself, and as in his extensive output of poetry, he is a soft poet who has been spot on with his clarity of expression, a demand that he has constantly subjected himself of in his poems.
Poetry Books of the Year 2021
All these extraordinary books will make a good read and a memorable present. It is also an honour for the poets chosen.
Poet of Honour: Ruth Padel
Ruth is one of seventy-two great-great-grandchildren of Charles Darwin. Ruth Padel has won the first prize in one of our most coveted awards, the National Poetry Competition. The quality of her work has remained timeless with much enviable consistency. All great poets have a deep sense of music and how words assemble in line with that sate of mind. But Ruth’s understanding of it goes deeper. She grew up playing chamber music and singing, and took raga lessons. Singing and playing music of all kinds, especially classical and world music, informs her work deeply.
Poet of Honour: Christopher Reid
In Christopher Reid’s many poems the words invoke a real airy, sensual presence of images. In your transference to the ambience, you are presented with smell, taste and the sensation of touch.
On The Rocks
A poem by Yogesh Patel
with a warning: Drink responsibly
Courage is an eternal, euphoric spirit./ And only the spirit makes me/
speak aloud. And the trying/ freedom always needs it.
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